A Potter Dilemma
by authorincognito
Summary: On a normal day of laughs and jokes for the marauders, three kids appear at the doorstep of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy. The marauders strive to answer several mind-boggiling questions. Who are they? Where did they come from? And, most importantly, why does one of them look almost exactly like James?
1. Chapter 1

Saturday day dawned on Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy in an aray of sunshine and fluffy white clouds- something that rather conflicted with the fact that they were in a fully fledged war with what was turning out to be the greatest dark wizard that magical world had the misfortune to encounter. A sort of tension hung in the air outside the castle. Of course, it was filled with usual laughs and chattering of the students, but each and every one of them, in the back of their mind, were worried about the war. Each and every one of these students outwardly portrayed these emotions differently. One girl, for example, stayed to herself and refused to let anybody talk to her in a friendly manner to suffer less pain. Another boy preferred to act overly protective of his friends when even the lightest fight with anyone that he didn't consider a friend. James Potter, on the other hand, preferred to plan on his next prank with his best friends to try to keep his mind off the war.

And so, it was on this overly sunny day in the middle of September that found James Potter lounging on a thick branch of a tree, gazing down at his friends below him with an unusually large grin plastered across his face. "So," he said as he called down to them, "who do you reckon we should prank this time?" After all their good times and jokes at Hogwarts other the years, they had subsequently pranked nearly the entire student body at Hogwarts.

"Maybe... Lily Evans?" Peter said questioningly from where he was lying with his back against the tree, so that James had to crane his head to get a good look at him. This innocent-sounding question was followed with Sirius cuffing Peter around the ear.

"Are you daft, Wormtail? Everyone in this school knows that James fancies her!" Sirius said with a laugh, gazing upward at his partner-in-crime with a mischievous gleam in his eyes.

"Oh," was all that Peter could manage, bowing his head in embarassment.

James rolled off his perch on the tree and landed extremly cat-like in front of them and sat down. "So? Doesn't mean I wouldn't like to play a joke on dear Lily."

Remus, who had otherwise been quite during this exchange, broke his silence with a laugh. "You couldn't succeed in playing a prank on Lily, even if you wanted to do James."

James cocked his head in confusion. "And why is that, Remus?" He asked, but instead of him answering it was Sirius. "Because we would be halfway finished with the prank and you would run like a little scared mouse and warn her about what you were going to do."

James puffed out his chest defiantly. "No, I wouldn't!" Which was followed by the snickering of his fellow Gryffindors.

"What? I wouldn't do that!" Yet another round of laughing arose, and Sirius reached over to clap James on the back. "You just keep telling yourself that, mate." Sirius, Remus, and Peter all stood up from their place amonst the tree, followed silently by a scowling James to the castle.

As they were walking up the stone front steps, a blinding flash of light appeared before them, causing all four of them to land comically on their bottoms. " What the...?" James heard Sirius question beside him as James looked ahead of him to see what had caused the light.

In front of them were three kids in Hogwarts robes, but they had never seen these people before. The oldest one was a boy who looked to be about the marauders age, sixteen, and he had unkempt brown hair accompanied with brown eyes that had a certain gleam to them that made James know right away that he was a prankster like the rest of them.

The other boy, who looked a few years youger than the first, looked so much like James that he actually had to blink a few times. Same facial features, same unkempt black hair, same... No, different green eyes.

The youngest of the bunch was a girl with long, slightly wavy red hair and warm brown eyes that were exactly the same color as the oldest one.

The red-haired girl turned on the brown-haired boy, obviously furious, as she had her arms crossed over her chest. "James! What did you just do?!"


	2. Chapter 2

"What?! I didn't do anything! Exclaimed the boy with dark brown hair.

The red-haired girl narrowed her eyes in disbelief. "Well, what do you think happens when you are fooling around with a time-turner and break it? Who knows when we are!" The girl said, throwing her hands up in exasperation.

The black-haired boy, who had been utterly silent throughout this entire exchange, spoke up. "She has a point, James. Dad told us to never ever touch his stuff

James blinked in surprise. The three unidentified Hogwarts students hadn't seemed to notice them yet, which James couldn't decide was good or bad. However, with James being James, he couldn't just not greet somebody he didn't know- after all, they could become fantastic pranking subjects later in life.

So, James stood up and, with a rather dramatic bow, said "Why, hello there. Never seen you here around before. Where are you from?" He tried to make this into something like everyday conversations. But when three witches and wizards appear in a burst of golden lights soundlessly... well, even for a wizard, that would be counted as being highly unusual and peculiar.

The three students, who James now thought of to be siblings, turned around in shock to him. As they stood open-mouthed at the marauders, Peter, Remus, and Sirius finally got over their shock of the siblings sudden appearance.

Remus, being the prefect that he was, tried to act a bit more formal and in control in front of the siblings- not too much, though, he didn't want to become some self-righteous person who wanted people to worship the ground beneath his feat. "Hello, My name is Remus Lupin, and these are my friends Peter Pettigrew, Sirius Black, and James Potter." He said whilst gesturing to each and every one of them. "Who are you?"

The black-haired was the first to respond to Remus's question. "Oh, um, I'm Al...Alex, and this is my little sister, er, Lillian, and my older brother, Jamie." Alex looked at the marauders curiously, as if he recognized them and was trying to will them to recognize him as well. The problem was, none of the four Gryffindors had ever seen these people before.

The brown-haired boy, who James now recognized as Jamie, rubbed his hands and stepped forward. "This is going to be fun." He said with a slightly mischeivious cackle to his voice.

"No, it won't! Do you know how much trouble we could get into! This is all your fault! If you had just been a good little boy like dad had wanted you to be, we wouldn't even be in this mess!" Lillian said, turning on her eldest brother. James had to admit that despite the girl's small size and age, she was very feisty.

"She's right Jam... Jamie. This is all your fault." Alex said, to which followed a very heated argument between the three siblings.

"Now, what is going on here?" Someone behind James asked.


	3. Chapter 3

_ "_Hello, Professor Dumbledore." James said as turned around to face the Headmaster of Hogwarts. Dumbledore looked at each one of them in turn, and showed a particular amount of interest when his eyes sought Alex, Lillian, and Jamie.

"Hmm... I don't recall seeing you three before. Perhaps in my growing age my memory has escaped me. Would you like to tell me your names and help me remember?" Dumbledore said, and James barely stiffled a laugh at the thought of Dumbledore tricking the three mysterious arrivals at Hogwarts their names to see if they could be trusted or not."

Jamie was the first to take up on the offer, and James saw that his two siblings exchanged nervous glances. "Hello, sir!" Jamie said jovially. "I am Jamie, and these are my brother, Alex, and my sister, Lillian." Jamie attempted to put his arms around them, but Lillian shook it off and Alex stepped away. Clearly they were still mad at their older brother.

For a while, Dumbledore said nothing, looking thoughtful. " And your last name?" He asked innocently.

The reaction that followed was simultaneous. Jamie, Alex, and Lillian all looked like they had been slapped across their face and appeared to all be thinking very quickly.

"Our last name, sir?" Alex asked hesitantly.

"Yes." Dumbledore said.

"Oh, um, our last name is P... P... Porter! Yeah, that's our last name!" Alex said triumphantly, and James narrowed his eyes in suspicion. The boy was obviously lying. However, Dumbledore hadn't appeared to acknowledge the fact of Alex's strange behavior (or else he ignored it, which James thought to be more likely, as James didn't recognize the name "Porter" to belong to any of the Death Eaters names that he knew, and Dumbledore probably knew about more Death Eaters than he did).

"Er, Professor?" Lillian asked.

"Yes, Mrs. Porter?" Dumbledore inquired.

"Well, we were about to come up to your office to tell you something, so..." Lillian trailed off, apparently at a loss of words, which made James suspicions about the three of them rise tremendously. Luckily for them, Alex spoke up.

"So, we were wondering if we could go up there with you, to tell you that _thing_ we wanted to tell you about."

" You are more than welcome to tell me here, Mr. Porter." Dumbledore said, and the three siblings looked uncomfortable.

" Well, it's more of a private matter, sir." Lillian said, and Dumbledore nodded.

"All right, dear. Follow me." Dumbledore said, and he walked up the steps of Hogwarts castle, closely followed by Alex, Lillian, and Jamie.

Once the large oak doors of Hogwarts castle had shut behind them, James turned around to face his friends. "What was that about, do you reckon?"

Sirius shrugged. "Dunno. But they didn't really seem like Death Eaters, did they? I mean, I lived with dark wizards my entire life, and I've never heard the name "Porter"."

"But you still think something is up with the pair of them?" Remus said, and James and Sirius nodded.

"They didn't seem strange." Peter said, looking downcast.

"Are you kidding, Wormtail? Three people just showed up at Hogwarts and you don't find that the least bit peculiar? Not to mention the fact that they are clearly lying about who they are." Sirius said, laughing.

James suddenly grinned, an idea forming in his mind. Remus noticed and narrowed his eyes at him. " Are you thinking what I think your thinking?" He asked. James nodded.

Remus sighed. "Well, I won't be abel to see you anyway, and there's nothing in the Prefect's manual that advises again invisibility cloaks, so go ahead." He waved his hand aside, and James grabbed Sirius's hand and dragged him up the castle steps.

* * *

They had waited about an hour to allow Alex, Lillian, and Jamie to talk to Dumbledore, and now James and Sirius were both hunched up under the cloak that James's father had given him when he had first come to Hogwarts, looking intently down onto the map that they had created a year ago as they walked down the middle of a deserted hallway. "Do you see them?" James hissed as he struggled to keep the cloak over top of them both. Sirius shook his head, keeping his eyes fixed to the bit of parchament that revealed to them where everything and everyone in Hogwart's was at the time.

After about a minute or two of searching Sirius looked up from the map, face pale with shock. "James." he said.

"Yes?" James asked, sparing a glance to look at his very best friend.

"They're not on here."


	4. Chapter 4

Silence followed Sirius's words, and James tried to wrap his head around what he had said. Jamie, Alex, and Lillian Porter's names were not on the Marauder's Map? That was impossible! The map had always worked for them! Well... up until now, at least.

"Give me that!" James hissed under his breath, and Sirius handed the map over to him, still looking deeply shocked. James stared at the map intently, looking for anything that included "Lillian", "Alex", "Jamie", "Porter", or perhaps "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire" as that's what they all were in James eyes. But James didn't find anything on them; just the regular people of Hogwarts that he saw on a daily basis.

James stuffed the map into his jeans pocket. "Weird. Do you think they... hmmm... I don't know, caused it malfunction or something? But that would've been impossible. The map was in my trunk the entire time, and I don't reckon they've been up there so..." James trailed off, staring abesent-mindedly into space as he pondered what all this meant

Firstly, three kids appear on the steps of Hogwarts, secondly, they lie about who they are, and lastly, the map that James and his friends had created a year ago, suddenly stopped working correctly after all the times they had depended on it to make sure their pranks went smoothly? These three things all shouted one thing to him. Death Eaters! They are related to Death Eaters who sent them to spy on us! But... Dumbledore hadn't appeared to be bothered by them, and James trusted Dumbledore's judgement more than anyone elses so...

"What are we going to do now?" Sirius asked, interrupting James train of thought.

James shrugged. "Wing it?"

* * *

However, the "Winging It" plan didn't go down so well. It seemed that after all that reliance on the map had came back and bit them in the butt. They searched around the school for what felt like hours, but they could not find any sign of Alex, Lillian, or Jamie.

Exhausted, they came back to where they started, at the now full of people hallway. James slumped against the wall, putting his face in his hands. " I don't understand." He mumbled so quietly that Sirius had to lean close to him to catch what he was saying. "This has _never_ happened before."

James was brought out of his misery of his snooping around not having any results by Sirius's laugh. "Look who it is!"

James removed his face from his hands, half-hoping to see one of the Porter siblings, and was thoroughly dissapointed to see "Snivellus", or Severus Snape, walking down the middle of the hallway with his face buried in some sort of book. James's mood lifted slightly at the thought of doing what he loved best- teasing Snape.

"Hey, Snivellus!" He said before Snape could pass them.

Snape looked up from the book and sneered. "What, Potter."

James shrugged. "Oh, nothing. I just wanted to make sure your book was okay, what with all your grease stains on it."

Sirius sniggered. "Yeah, we have to watch out for the well-being of books everywhere, or else they'll be forced to endure your nastiness." Sirius said, putting emphasis on the word _nastiness._

Furious, Snape dropped his book and pulled out his wand, preparing to hex the life out of James Potter. And he would have, had not somebody else beaten him to it.


	5. Chapter 5

"Stupefy!" A voice cried from beside Snape, and James felt himself being thrown back several feet, knocking several people over as he did so.

He sat up, dazed and confused, whilst the people he had knocked over got to their feet and grumbled under their breath. James stood and blinked stars out of his eyes as he focused in on the person who had cast the spell on him. It had been Alex.

James felt something brush past him, and turned around just in time to see Snape walk around the corner. He started after him, but Alex walked over and grabbed his arm. James shook his arm free. "Why did you do that?" James hissed under his breath as Sirius walked up to the pair of them.

"Yes, why did you do that? I mean, don't you know that Snivellus and James go head-to-head against each other ona daily basis?" Sirius said, raising one of his eyebrows.

Alex rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, yeah. I mean, I couldn't just stand their while you and my nam-" Alex cut off abruptly, blushing profusely.

"James and your what?" Sirius asked curiously.

"My house. A person from my house." Alex said nervously.

"Your house...? Wait a minute, are you saying that you are in _Slytherin_?" James asked, saying the word "Slytherin" as though it was a disgusting swear word.

"Yes, and my brother and sister are both in Gryffindor. Your point?" Alex said defiantly, raising his head up high.

James tilted his head, confused. When he had first met the three sibling just a few short hours ago, they had all seemed to get along just fine, and now Alex was saying that they were seperated into the two house that hated each over the most. Now, James knew that it was possible for siblings to be split apart into different houses, and most of them were fine with that, but Gryffindor and Slytherin? James only knew one pair of siblings that were like that, and they hated each other.

James's wondering was cut short by a voice at the end of the hallway saying, "Al!", and a pair of arms wrapped themselves around Alex's neck.

"Hey, Lil," Alex said. "Uh, can you get off me, your kind of choking me."

"Oh, sorry." Lillian said apologettically, as James saw Jamie walk around the corner toward them.

When Jamie had made it over to them, James had to know. "So, where were you three? We looked everywhere but couldn't find you."

The siblings all exchanged nervous glances.

"We were in the seventh floor corridor." Alex said quickly.

"The seventh floor corridor? That's odd. I should have seen you on the ma- er I mean a special tool of ours." Sirius said.

That is very strange, James thought to himself, they should have seen the three of them if they had been on the seventh floor this entire time. Speaking of which, why would they be on the seventh floor for hours? It just didn't seem logical to James.

Jamie smiled. "Oh, are you talking about the marauder's map?"


	6. Chapter 6

_ SMACK!_

The sound of Lillian's hand hitting Jamie across the face echoed throughout the stunned silence that followed.

Jamie rubbed his reddening cheek. "OW!" He complained very loudly. "What was that for!"

"For being an idiot." Lillian said as if that were the most obvious thing in the entire world. Then she hit him again.

"I got the message the first time you know." Jamie said, now massaging both sides of his face, grimacing.

"That wasn't a message." Lillian said.

James stopped what he was doing and stared at her, confused. "Then why'd you hit me for?"

Lillian shrugged. "I was trying to get the idiocy out of you."

From beside them, Alex snickered. "Did you succeed?" Jamie scowled and open his mouth to say something, but Sirius beat him to it.

"Hold on just one second. How did you know about the map? What are you hiding from us?" He asked, frowing and pointing a finger at each one of them in turn accusingly.

The three siblings got that uncomfortable look again. "Er, well, we, uh, can't tell you." Alex muttered.

James, finally recovering himself, crossed his arms over his chest. "Oh? And why can't you tell us?"

Alex pondered over this a moment. "Because, for one thing, if we told you then you wouldn't believe us, and for another, if we told you, we could get into _big_ trouble. Like, Ministry of Magic trouble." He said very siriously.

From beside of him, Lillian rolled her eyes. "Great, just keep giving out hints to them, why don't you. God, Alex, sometimes I swear your worse than Jamie. Strike that, _nobody's_ worse than Jamie."

"Hey!" Jamie cried before Lillian grabbed his arm.

"I only speak the truth." She said. Then she turned back around to James and Sirius. "Now, if you two don't mind, we are going to go and eat dinner." Lillian grabbed hold of her other brothers hand, and within seconds the three were whisked away into the crowd of students.`

James groaned and rubbed his temples, trying to get rid of an emerging headache. "I have never been more confused in my entire life." He said to Sirius, who nodded his head in agreement.

"Well," Sirius said after about a minute or two, "There's no sense being confused on an empty stomach. Come on!" And then he turned and ran away, most presumingly heading down to the Great Hall. James sighed and ran after him.

* * *

No less than five minutes later, they had arrived at the Great Hall, where they took their seats with Remus and Peter.

"What took you so long?" Remus hissed as James began piling food onto his plate.

James sighed. "You wouldn't believe what happened." He said, and then he told his friend exactly what events had occurred.

Just as James had expected, it appeared that Remus didn't believe him. "Really? They weren't on the map at all?" Remus asked.

Across from them, Sirius nodded. "Yeah, we couldn't find them anywhere. It was like the map had malfunctioned or something, except for the fact that it worked just fine for everyone else."

Remus chewed his food slowly, deep in thought. "Could they have been going under an alias?"

"A what?" Peter asked, joining in on the conversation.

Remus looked at him. " An alias- when somebody tells you a name, but it isn't their name. Usually it means they are trying to hide something."

"Like being a Death Eater." Sirius pointed out, gesturing with his fork at Remus.

Remus shook his head. "Not nescessarily."

"What else could they be hiding?" James inquired, raising an eyebrow at Remus.

"I'm not sure yet, but we'll find out soon enough." Remus assured him.

Sirius reached over and clapped a hand on James's shoulder. "Yeah Death Eater or not- which I still believe they are-" he said, glaring at Remus intently, "we will find out what they're hiding. After all, who else is better for the job than us." Sirius grinned.

James laughed. "All right, then. Operation 'Find-Out-Who-In-The-Name-Of-Merlin-These-Porter-K ids-Are-And-What-They-Are-Hiding' is underway."

"That's not a very good operation name." Remus observed.

"Oh, shut up, Moony." James said, grinning, and went back to eating his food, thinking about Alex, Lillian, and Jamie.


	7. Chapter 7

In the dark depths of the forbidden forest, three animals lay undected under the light of the moon. James, Sirius, and Peter had snuck out after curfew. Remus had voted to stay behind so that he could watch if anyone grew suspicious about there whereabouts. At least, that's what he said. Another possible reason, James mused as he watched the Porter siblings through the branches of the trees, was that he was terrified of the moon. Full, half, quarter. It didn't matter what type of moon it was, he was still utterly terrified of it.

Speaking of the reason that they were there, at around ten o'clock P.M., James had spotted Jamie, Alex, and Lillian sneak through the portrait of the Fat Lady. Curiosity took the best of him, and, as quietly as they could, they followed them. Along the way, Sirius had whispered that he thought that they were going to some secret hideout where they could discuss the uses of dark magic. Peter thought that they just got restless and decided to go take a walk.

"A walk? At this time of night, Wormtail?" Sirius had questioned.

Peter wrung his hands nervously. "Well, we go out late at night sometimes, don't we?"

Before Sirius could speak, James said, "Yes, but we don't usually go out at night to just walk, now do we?" Vaguely pointing out the monthly adventures that they had whenever Remus went all Werewolf-mode.

It came as a bit of a surprise to them when they saw that they were heading to Hagrid's Hut. Hagrid had only been gamekeeper here for a few years, ever since that old gamekeeper passed away, but he had been working here since before the old man had passed away- he had been somewhat of a Gamekeeper-in-Training, if you will.

The three children had knocked on his door, and Hagrid had opened it and greeted them like they were old friends. They were in there for quite a while, and they had just come out with the promise to see Hagrid again soon.

James looked around at his surroundings. Peter was burrowing in the leaves, looking so much like an ordinary rat that James had to remind himself that it was Peter. Sirius was up in a very thick branch in a tree that practically hung over the Porter's kids heads, ready to pounce on them if need be.

"Do you reckon he's told everyone here? About us, I mean." James snapped his head around as he heard Alex speak.

Lillian shook her head. "No, I think he's only told selective members of the staff."

"But . . . won't that effect . . . where we come from, if he's told somebody?" Jamie asked, the worry evident in his voice.

Lillian paused. "I'm not sure."

"Uh, guys." Alex said, pointing into the forest. James felt his stag heart quicken as he saw that he was pointing directly at Peter.

Lillian saw where he was pointing as well and swore under her breath. "Well, well, well, Lil's. I've never seen you speak that way before. What will our dear grandmother have to say about that?" James said, raising an eyebrow and laughing out loud.

"Be quiet, idiot! You know that if he's here, then the rest of them are as well! Come on, we have to get back to the castle, and please, be careful about what you say, especially around them."

Her two brothers nodded their heads and started to make their way back up the castle grounds. Before Lillian followed them, however, she turned back to look at Peter. "You know, I've never liked rats." She said almost as though she was talking to herself. And then she turned back around and ran after her brothers, leaving the three marauders in the forbidden forest, all of them gazing in shock at one another at what had just occurred.


End file.
